Istanbul Was a Fairy Tale (44 page)

That was our last encounter.

I was abroad when she died. Juliet had been at her bedside and had washed her just before she passed away.

Rosy was thankful for the cover as I had guessed, but I think she failed to assign to it its true value.

Berti was among the chief mourners.

Monsieur Jacques reacted to the news saying: “May God pardon her transgressions. Well, it’ll be our turn soon. No escape from it.”

Once I had asked Juliet if she had said something to be relayed to me. “No,” had been her reply. “She said nothing about you . . . except . . . except . . . ‘Well, it’s snowing heavily, isn’t it? The earth is already shrouded in white . . . ’” She had pronounced these words in July . . . For some life had changed its course, once again.

The codicil she had prepared to bequeath to me was that antique tea set; that tea set, witness of the hours I’ll never forget; the set that in my difficult moments reminds me of the guests that attended those tea parties; of the movies, of that screen of dreams more real than reality, in which I find solace. The tea set is, at present, among the objects I value most, objects that are waiting to figure in a special story in the future.

The fact that I have referred to her in the present book as ‘Aunt Tilda’ requires some explanation, since I was not related to her by blood; yet, I cannot actually remember when and where I had first used that appellation. However, my mode of address must have pleased her; I’m positive about this. This was a stage play in which the actors brilliantly performed their respective roles. Old people need a young person who will appear to understand them while young men need an aged auntie with whom they can confer things they could not express openly and in whom they could try to see their future reflected. The success of the play would depend on this tacit reciprocal understanding. I must have called her Tilda then and not Aunt Tilda. It seemed as though the words uttered, the visual impact, and the verbal exchange of ideas had called for such an invocation. I must keep in mind this point when I take up my pen to write down her story. On top of the identity of ‘aunt’ another identity had to be superimposed. This path must have been one of those that most of us would like to keep secret yet intact forever. There was a path that opened out to darkness, to our darkness . . . I wonder if I can touch it now. I seem to hear a voice from afar . . . A voice . . . How have we come that far?

You were in the blue of a song

I ventured to play a little trick on Berti somewhere in the story I intended to write about him. To this end I had to arrange an encounter between himself and that woman—who still seemed impossible for me to describe to a third person and who had made a gift to me of one of the most beautiful corners of this city; the balcony of the small apartment overlooking the Bosporus. This woman had diverted my attention to books and the contents of their pages, which paved the way to that sense of loneliness aroused by those steps that had failed to be taken, as well as to a great number of contingencies, unanticipated joys, and, more importantly, to the deferment of expectations. The encounter would be a meeting which would find itself recorded against a backdrop of associations already pregnant with meaning from one of the photographs in my possession. It was a cool summer evening and the lights of the city had begun twinkling as the color of the sky was borrowing the hues of pink and dark blue from the sea . . . a summer evening resolute in keeping distant from the din of the city and its odors that trace the course of our daily lives . . . This had brought about a lyrical atmosphere from the very beginning.

I might begin by mentioning the associations that a ship in transit might inspire, a ship sailing from remote realms, which, in her passage through the Bosporus, would not be in a position to take up an acquaintance with its onlookers, destined herself to be terra incognita to those she passed. This remark had served my purposes elsewhere, at other times. The settings in question also included passenger ships that carried people across the seas, from one end of the world to the other. For people living on the coastline of certain realms such views created in their imagination legendary representations, legends that fed on old languages, different words, and disparate dawns. Unless you experienced those touches, felt your way in those rooms and lived through those thralldoms you could not have an inkling of this, of course. What made a legend a legend was precisely this inexpressible darkness, our own darkness. I had felt this when I was groping my way through other people’s dusk . . . as I was searching for myself . . . You could always sense the steps of others whom you never anticipated. To be heading for it in the real sense of the word also meant running the risk of being confronted with a new solitude. Taking into consideration the experiences we had to go through with all our deficiencies, certain things released emotions, whose origin was a mystery within us.

The house I would choose as a setting for Berti’s story should have a history with its inhabitants; a house that, in defiance of other houses, should have a history behind it, a house that breathed simultaneously with its dwellers, a legacy to that woman from her family, with its souvenirs, voices, latent scents, and shadows; a house that cannot yield itself so easily to other people or be sold
in toto
to a third person. Berti, with his cream-colored trousers, claret red Italian shoes of fine leather, royal blue mohair sweater concealing a red silk shirt, Pathek Philippe wrist watch, and enamel Dupont lighter, might take on the appearance of the figure that he would have liked to play in a stage play. The woman, on the other hand, might be imagined to wear a transparent dress that highlighted her curves, a band around her neck to which would be affixed a dark red gem and a few silver bracelets on her wrists. The band around her neck with the dark red gem had the aim of cutting a dashing figure, separating her from all possible rivals and to give the impression that it had a legend behind it. He could now start sipping his raki on the rocks; it was a summer night, wasn’t it? He could set the table and decorate it with food from the delicatessen amongst which melon, plums, white cheese, and pistachio should figure. Could one imagine a better odor than the smell of the sea mingled with alcohol? The woman could drink more than Berti; after all she was a writer . . . Being a woman and an author who led a solitary life, she had to make a display of her spiritual agony and let out her breath in a sigh . . . Music would be
de rigueur
under the circumstances, music that sometimes provoked sexual desire; however, the volume should be turned down, suiting the sonority of the voices, and allowing, at times, the parties of the dialogue to lend an ear to what is being played. Among the possible old hits one might think of Billie Holliday, Aretha Franklin, or Ella Fitzgerald. Elvis Presley would not be a bad choice, one of his lyrical pieces, instead of all the hits of his past. Are you lonesome tonight? would, for instance, be the right tune to listen to, if I may say so; as is the norm with such moments we try to steal away to those we have an insight into from time to time. However, we must be careful not to impair the unity of the whole; Elvis may well sing other songs toward the early hours of the morning. A surfeit of his songs may induce us to put on an LP of Leonard Cohen on the record player, for the sake of Suzanne and Bird on a Wire . . . Were she to speak of her new novel she was working on; of a writer friend who she wanted to talk about; of the wall clock, a witness to so many things; of the disputes going on between Berti and his daughter; of the years of study in Cambridge; of her increased yearning for her brother despite the lapse of such a long time and the events that took place in between; of the burning interest she took in antique objects; of the stumbling blocks she was confronted with in the office; and of the snapshots she took in the course of her travels, one could find a new narrow path to probe. My knocking at her door would coincide with her lucubration . . . in the hope that I would be allowed to have access to her haunt . . . with full knowledge of the fact that just like everybody else in times of solitude she would be absorbed in meditation in the pursuit of her own self, trying to breathe fresh life into her life from a different time; my reason for knocking on the door was not only to find a new story but also to cause my hero and heroine to experience that sense of surprise by being caught unawares . . . May I remind my readers that a play was being enacted whose denouement and conclusion was unpredictable? I would have achieved my objective; Berti’s countenance would reflect uneasiness caused by the revelation of his secret; the woman, taken unawares by my unexpected presence in the kitchen as an intruder in the story, would, while being engaged in the preparation of drinks, try to share her feelings
sotto voce
with me. I had gone back on the agreement; how could I ever tell her story under such circumstances? All probabilities were based on the narration of that sentimental relationship between, on the one hand—a woman who had already covered a considerable distance in her life and had retired to her solitude, having put the finishing touches on her writings and experiences—and on the other hand a young author trying to write the sixty-year history of one family. The woman and the young author would be discussing in this atmospheric house, in the background of other works of fiction and in the light of other similar works, those traits that had come to the fore during the process of penning their stories. In other words, the work would be written piecemeal, in installments . . . with patience and dogged perseverance . . . with a view to touching certain corners of life. Our words, invocations, and secret conversations were, like all relationships (like love for that matter), desired to be reinstated intricately, since new words and invocations did not come unless those secret conversations were held. Now, I’d taken up my pen to commit to paper a story unique in its genre despite all the preparations and the promises made and honored to others. To write such a bad work would be an act of betrayal. I was to realize that I couldn’t make headway beyond a certain point, beyond the wrong I had committed in doing so. The whole tale had an aspect that lacked credibility. This aspect would come to the fore only after a lapse of considerable time . . . or after certain vain expectations fell short of realization. Her feminine intuition sensed this. What she had left behind seemed to prompt in her certain things, things likely to be conceived only after risking certain losses. I was resolved not to be garrulous; I would merely say that I had simply tried my hand in setting a play on the stage. Then we would be going back to the balcony as though nothing had been discussed. Thus we, as abettors, would find ourselves on common ground. That would be the end of our intricate relationship. We would have to mislay the idea of co-authorship in the kitchen. Her intention had been to punish me by sparing herself from me. This was the feminine aspect she reflected. I would be suffering from the consequences of this abandonment and solitude years later. I had thought we might once again think of an assignation for the sake of that text; but I could not get rid of that sense of deficiency brought about by the encounters that I had had, having experienced other places, individuals, and words. However, even though after the lapse of so many years, the said encounter
had
taken place. What is more, it had taken place under circumstances much more favorable when compared to our former meetings, and we had somehow drawn nearer to each other; it looked as though we had returned to each other with a part of ourselves restored, a part that we had mislaid somewhere and had thought been consigned to oblivion forever. It may be that somewhere in-between we had been reduced still further. This deficiency was fated to someone else. We were that selfsame deficiency; the place we could not make the most of and wherein we could not materialize our dreams. We were, in fact, residing in the places we felt out of place, we could not bring ourselves to take pleasure in those places. And yet we were so near our heroes and heroines, our men whose hands we could grasp if only we were to take a few steps forward. Under the spell of our existence on that balcony we would end up being each other’s spectators. Berti would find himself breathing in the evening, and consequently the present text, while the woman would cast furtive glances at me to check my progress with my writing; I, for my part, would try tacitly, merely by glancing, to insinuate my wish to carry on the play, in due consideration of all the inevitable consequences facing me. Berti had to experience this fascinating tabooed relationship. His past, that was in my custody, deserved this small gift of mine. In my capacity as author, I felt obliged to provide him with such an evening. Berti had to experience this banned relationship upon the background of his dreams and boundaries.

Photographs live

When we left the shop together in the evening, on the pretext that community taxis were not always available at Nişantaşı, we were to walk down to Karaköy where we were to take the miniature subway, the smallest in the world, and arrive in Beyoğlu. There we were to saunter along the main street, stopping in front of shop windows displaying women’s clothes. Berti would ask my opinion about the items displayed in the window. I had understood his veiled insinuations, but acted as though I was totally ignorant of his seemingly disinterested observations and so communicated my impressions to him. This was how the play should be acted . . . All these scenes were for Berti’s sake. I wanted him to rediscover his Lost Paradise after so many years, despite my limited means and capacities. As I was playing my role, making headway in the story, I had to have perfect confidence in myself. This may be the reason why, despite all my efforts, I took cognizance of the fact that I could not proceed (as I would have liked to) any further and had to acknowledge that the whole thing had been but the consequence of a weird idea. My rationale would be corroborated by that woman once again, by a wan smile emerging from her hidden self, from that special corner of ours, just like in her former stories that were in my custody. Did my despair lie in the boundaries that separated me from those individuals? I don’t think I’ll ever find an answer to this query. For the time being, I was resolved to leave those questions unanswered, to ignore the history that that woman and I had once shared, to make as if I had not heard them. To give utterance to our solitudes, dilemmas, and secret yearnings had never been easy. Leaving aside all these things, when I thought of the future stories I was planning to write, I ran the risk of encountering many new obstacles I would never be able to surmount. Such a relationship might bear resemblance to the relationship of Monsieur Jacques and Olga. It was certainly possible that people, despite their diversity, shared similar fates. Possible, all right, but certain stories could not contain certain reiterations no matter what the circumstances. Certain stories also failed to persuade us to acknowledge certain echoes that would bring us back to the same point of departure, just like with those loves that enslaved us. This may have been the reason for my restlessness. Despite all my various episodes, words, and losses, I could not shake off that individual whose stare never left me, who was peeping from somewhere that I could not pinpoint as much as I wanted to. Solitude was freedom in its own way, a sort of self-observation, I knew that. Nonetheless, true solitude or segregation was for those individuals that had never been recognized by others as they had dreamt of themselves. Was it then those walls that smothered our dreams and fantasies, killing us leisurely one by one? My keeping Berti above ground in this story for so long was becoming more and more difficult were one to consider these flights . . . more difficult from day-to-day . . . It may be due to the women I had known that I could not bring myself to imagine that woman of my dreams befriending a man like Berti, unless she thought she was likely to find a safe refuge in him from a tragedy she was trying to flee. There had certainly been misfortunes, but she was a special woman. She might have a better insight than most into the injuries that certain individuals received: exactly where, when, and by whom. I knew that the course taken in human relationships could not be predicted, and that the soul’s adventure gained meaning through unforeseen harbors and unpredictable storms. Nonetheless, she had, to my mind, a very special place in a totally different story. She was expecting to hear me utter a brand new sentence, expressed or written by no one before . . . For, I still preserved that warmth she had left in me. If one took account of the
sequelae
of daily concerns, given the fact that she could not be considered, on the whole, to be of a certain age and was still attractive, there was no reason for her to be making enormous sacrifices to make claims upon a man and try to prove herself to be a model of virtue. To cut a long story short, there was some truth in what she had said in the kitchen. Ours would be henceforth what lay beyond that point. We spent, in fact, many an evening on that balcony afterward . . .
tête-à-tête
. . . exactly as it had been fancied at the beginning. We discussed the novel I was intending to write. Berti seemed to be nearer to her then . . . After all, dreams were easier lived than actualities . . . I’m inclined to believe that the story written during those days had been the result of automatic writing in a way; a story that otherwise could never be written since I never had the courage to see it exposed so frankly to the public. Nonetheless, there still is a sentence shared by both of us which has not appeared so far in black-and-white, as I have kept it veiled, asking myself if certain words could not be fitted in their right places eventually. The same point puzzles me even today, but seems to be left unanswered for the moment. However, I have not lost confidence in time; for the sake of those protractions, of my delusions, barefaced lies, evasions, and introversions which make up whatever I’m supposed to be. This was one of the major reasons for my reliance on Berti’s friendship. He had come across my mind at a most unexpected moment on one of those evenings. A visitor on one of those evenings . . . Yet, I had preferred to keep silent and take the risk of betrayal. The story showed resistance. Berti’s self-distrust that had decided his course of action in life had dawned upon me. He seemed to have lost that little paradise or exigency years ago, during his time at Cambridge. That city together with what had been invested therein had been epitomized in my mind by an unforgettable room, a room to remain indelible on my memory forever, a room which could not be transported elsewhere despite all the distant associations it engendered and the memories confined in it. In order to be able to have an idea of this room, one had to have an inkling of its past. This was one of the reasons why he had told very few people about his former days. Yes, that was one of the reasons. In order to go back there, to that room at rare intervals, hoping to avoid settling old scores, making a strategic withdrawal . . . I mustn’t forget to mention our walks from Tünel to Taksim; walks which I visualize at present beyond the boundaries of many tales; a place where a very special path is kept alive beyond all the fantastic tales nestled within our breast, even though this path may have now been repaved using different stones, and looks at us as though we were strangers; even though we have remained on different shores, in different rooms, in different sentences. I wonder now where, in whom, and with what voice has that past lingered and abided? To judge by his observations and the attitudes he adopted toward me, I seem to be one of the rare people likely to understand him. This confidence was to take me to an open-ended story, preserved in a secret drawer for many years; a story that enslaved you and generated in you woeful imagery. I had realized this during one of our long walks. He had never wanted to let go of his story despite the wrongs he had committed, despite his faults and deficiencies. He had a firm belief that he had left an important part of his life there. He desired to tell it to someone and feel himself as a hero of that story. To tell someone and to receive visitors in his old room, even though it was now situated in a different realm. To tell, to be able to tell . . . even though he could not find the right words on such an occasion. In fact, he had been able to perceive only a part of his story. The other part, the part that had been communicated to me quite unexpectedly at some other time and place, by some other person, would remain my secret forever. The contents of this parenthesis I had come by would never be disclosed to him. Why had I acted in this way? Why had I preferred to keep from him a reality that would likely open a door to the story? Was it because I did not believe and did not want to believe in the things that had been imparted to me by a casual visitor after so many years, which I deemed to be irrelevant? Perhaps it was. However, it is my confirmed opinion that by this betrayal of our friendship my intention had been to rescue that souvenir. I don’t regret it. It is to be noted that to have been on the margin of events suited both our dispositions perfectly.